I found the article on the Internet, it took too long to write myself, and engineering knowledge is not enough, I post it for discussion.
Everyone knows the pyramids of ancient Egypt; their riddles still excite many minds. Who built them and how? Until now, no one can answer this question definitely. In fact, there are many such megaliths on the planet, the origin of which is very, very controversial. But there are also examples of objects whose creation history was deliberately changed.
The total height of the building is 47.5 m (15 floors). It is the tallest monument in the world made of solid granite.
Information from Wikipedia:
It was erected in 1834 in honor of the victory over Napoleon.
The total height of the building is 47.5 m. (15 floors)
The height of the shaft (monolithic part) of the column is 25.6 m
Promotional video:
The bottom column diameter is 3.5 m (12 ft), the top one is 3.15 m (10 ft 6 in.)
The total weight of the structure is 704 tons.
The weight of the stone column of the column is about 600 tons.
It is the tallest monument in the world made of solid granite
The column itself stands on a granite base without any additional supports, only under the influence of its own gravity.
Let us now look at this column through the eyes of an engineer. Draw your own conclusions.
In cross-section, the column is round with a diameter of 3.5 m, ideally polished.
First, let's take a look at how granite is mined and processed today. A modern granite quarry. The workpiece is sawn off from the rock with special wire saws. The photo shows the wheels on which the rope rotates like a caterpillar.
A modern granite quarry. To obtain a workpiece, many holes are drilled in the rock, and then chipped off.
This is what a blank looks like, which can be obtained in the 21st century. Its weight is 7 tons.
Saw for further processing of granite workpieces. The blade diameter of this saw is 1.8 meters. Machine weight 4 tons, power 20 kW.
Manufacturing of columns at the Moscow Stone Processing Plant (MKK)
These are the granite columns of the Kievsky railway station in Moscow: a classic example of modern architecture. Possibilities of modern technologies + expediency of costs give rise to such products.
The memorial stele "City of Military Glory" in Belgorod was built for more than one year and was opened with fanfare in 2007. The cost of the construction is 35 million rubles. Here we are primarily interested in a granite monolith made on the same MCC.
Characteristics of the Belgorod column: height 6.5m, diameter 0.83m, I could not find the exact weight, but no more than 50 tons.
According to history, two years later, in 1836, a book about the construction of the Alexander Column was published in Paris, this is a drawing of a quarry from it. Here is what he writes in Wikipedia: “After the masons, having examined the rock, confirmed the suitability of the material, a prism was cut off from it, which was much larger than the future column. Gigantic devices were used: huge levers and gates in order to move the block from its place and topple it onto the soft and resilient bed of spruce branches. The picture shows a sheer granite wall in a quarry, its height is 3-4 floors: what saw did they cut it with ???
And here is a drawing of a blank from the "book on the construction of the Alexander Column". We see a workpiece of the correct shape, its weight is more than 1000 tons. How was THIS carved from a piece of rock? How was IT processed to get the perfect round shape in the 19th century? The book does not answer these questions, it tells us about 200 stonecutters with picks. Moreover, I did not find information on how this can be done in our time. Can anyone suggest how to make a perfect 2nd order granite surface 3.5 meters in diameter in the 21st century?
Now about the delivery. In modern industry, there are very few examples where structures of a huge mass are forced to move. In the photo, the Saturn5 rocket is one of the few examples of the movement of a structure weighing about 1000 tons in our time.
Several examples of modern technology and its carrying capacity. The carrying capacity of the railway platform is 71 tons, i.e. to transport the convoy, 10 wagons will be needed, provided that we cut the convoy into 10 parts: the overall dimensions do not allow the entire convoy to be transported along the railway.
This is a crane girder at the Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP - it rolls on special rails placed on powerful supports, but even it will not be able to lift the column: the lifting capacity of this crane girder is "only" 500 tons.
This is a modern 1200 ton Liebherr truck crane. One of the tallest and most powerful mobile cranes in the world. When transporting to the place of deployment, the necessary parts for the mammoth are transported by 10 additional trucks. This one will theoretically be able to lift, but any slinger seeing the column will say: you can raise the column only in a horizontal position.
And this is how the column was supposedly raised to a pedestal on ropes. We will not argue how many hemp ropes will be needed, suppose all this was available. Let's also assume that somewhere inside a wooden structure are hidden blocks, which made it possible to erect a column with 2000 soldiers and 400 workers in 2 hours.
The figure hints that the column was "turned over", i.e. rested the lower edge on the pedestal and raised the upper one, but with this weight it is impossible - the edge of the granite will not stand. You need to put it strictly vertically, but how to fix the ropes to hold the 600 ton smooth cylinder tapering upwards?
It is also not clear what kind of tree the timber is made of: the height of the pine is 25 meters to the crown, the timber can be made 10-15 meters. In the figure in the structure, we see a beam more than 25 meters long and ~ 0.5 meters wide, compared to the figures of people, its width is 1.5-2 meters.
Also, based on the proportions of the base and length, it can be seen that the length of the column is distorted by almost two times.
Explicit distortion of actual dimensions.
